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Chapter 2

Personality,
Stress,
Learning,
and Perception

McGraw-Hill/Irwin © 2008 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved

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As the workplace becomes more diverse, it

becomes increasingly important to
understand what makes people different in
order to work productively as a team.
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Personality
⚫ Relatively
stable set of traits that aids in
explaining and predicting individual behavior
⚫ i.e., warm, aggressive, easygoing
⚫ i.e., Type A Personality
⚫ i.e., Type B Personality

⚫ Individuals
are all different, yet similar in
many ways
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Personality Development
⚫ Traitsare distinguishing personal
characteristics
⚫ Personality development is based on
genetics and environmental factors
⚫ Personality is the sum of genetics and a lifetime
of learning
⚫ Personality traits can be changed, with work
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Personality Classification Methods

⚫ Type A/ Type B
⚫ Type A: fast moving, hard driving, time conscious,
competitive, impatient, and preoccupied with work
⚫ Type B: often laid back or easy going

⚫ Locus of Control
⚫A continuum between an external and an internal
belief over who has control over one’s destiny
⚫ Can be internal or external
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Big Five Dimensions of Traits

Surgency

Agreeableness Adjustment

Conscientiousness Open to experience

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The Big Five Model of Personality (1 of 2)

⚫ Surgency – includes leadership and

extroversion traits
⚫ Agreeableness – includes traits related to
getting along with people
⚫ Adjustment – includes traits related to
emotional stability
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The Big Five Model of Personality (2 of 2)

⚫ Conscientiousness – includes traits related

to achievement
⚫ Openness to experience – includes traits
related to being willing to change and try new
things
1- Surgency: Getting ahead and leading through competing and influencing

Surgency

Leadership Extroversion
traits traits

Strong Weak Extrovert Introvert

- Energetic - Followers - Outgoing - Shy

- Assertive - Don’t like to - Sociable
- Active compete or - Gregarious
- Ambitious influence - Like to meet new people
- Willing to confront others
2- Agreeableness: getting along with people

Agreeableness

Strong Weak
(Agreeable) (Disagreeable)

- Warm - Cold
- Easygoing - Difficult
- Courteous - Uncompassionate
- Good-natured - Unfriendly
- Cooperative - Unsociable
- Tolerant
- Compassionate
- Friendly (have lots of
friends)
- Sociable (spend time with
people)
3- Adjustment: traits related to emotional stability

Adjustment

Emotionally Emotionally
stable unstable

- Good self-control - Bad self-control (out of

- Calmness control)
- Good under - Poor under pressure
pressure - Nervous
- Relaxed - Insecure
- Secure - Moody
- Positive - Depressed
- Willing to praise - Angry
others - Negative
- Quick to criticize others
- Narcissists
4- Conscientiousness: traits related to achievement

Conscientiousness

Conscientious Unconscientious

- Responsible - Irresponsible
- Dependable - Undependable
- Persistence
- Conformity
- Organization
- The willingness to work
hard and put in extra
time and effort to
accomplish goals to
achieve success
5- Openness to Experience: being willing to change and try
new things

Openness to
Experience

Strong Weak
(open) (closed)

- Imaginative - Avoid change

- Intellectual - Avoid new things
- Open-minded
- Autonomous
- Creative
- Seek change
- Willing to try new things
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Improving Behavior, Human

Relations, and Performance (1 of 2)
Before you interact with another person, ask
yourself questions like-
⚫ What type of personality does the other
person have?
⚫ How is he or she likely to behave in this
situation during our interaction?
⚫ How can I create a win-win situation?

⚫ Is there anything I should or should not do to

make this interaction successful?
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Improving Behavior, Human

Relations, and Performance (2 of 2)
After you interact with another person, ask
yourself questions like-
⚫ Was my assessment of the other person’s
personality correct?
⚫ Did the other person behave as I predicted?
⚫ Did I create a win-win situation?
⚫ Did my behavior help the relations, and
should I continue with this person?
⚫ Did my behavior hurt the relations, and
should I discontinue it with this person?
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Stress
⚫ Stress – is an emotional and/or physical reaction to
environmental activities and events
⚫ Stressors – situations in which people feel anxiety,
tension, and pressure
⚫ How people react to stressors depends on:
⚫ the circumstances
⚫ each person’s physical and psychological characteristics
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The Positive Side of Stress

⚫ Some stress helps improve performance by
challenging and motivating us
⚫ Many people perform best under some pressure.
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Problems Associated with Too Much

Stress
⚫ Too much stress affects:
⚫ Personal health
⚫ Morale

⚫ Productivity

⚫ Organizational efficiency
⚫ Absenteeism

⚫ Medical costs
⚫ Profitability

⚫ Stress also causes many physical illnesses

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Causes of Stress

Organizational
Personality type
climate

Management Degree of job

behavior satisfaction
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Signs of Stress
⚫ Disillusionment ⚫ Burnout – the constant
lack of interest and
⚫ Irritableness
motivation to perform
⚫ Headaches
one’s job because of
⚫ Bodytension stress
⚫ Exhaustion

⚫ Stomach problems
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Controlling Stress
⚫ Step 1 – Identify stressors
⚫ Step 2 – Determine their causes and
consequences
⚫ Step 3 – Plan to eliminate or decrease the
stress
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Ways to Reduce Stress

Exercise Nutrition

Support
Positive
Relaxation System
Thinking
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Many organizations view managing knowledge

as the key to their success.
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Intelligence (1 of 2)
⚫ Intelligence – is the level of one’s capacity
for:
⚫ new learning
⚫ problem solving

⚫ decision making

⚫ Itis generally agreed that intelligence is a

product of both genetics and the environment
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Intelligence (2 of 2)
⚫ Intelligence
is a strong predictor of many
important outcomes in life, such as:
⚫ educationalattainment
⚫ occupational attainment

⚫ People have multiple intelligences, two of

which (interpersonal and leadership) involve
working with people
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Emotional Intelligence
⚫ Incorporates a broad range of abilities that
explain workplace behavior as it relates to the
way individuals manage emotions
⚫ It is part of multiple intelligences
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Five Components of Emotional

Intelligence

1. Self-awareness Being conscious of your emotions within you

Your gut feelings can help you on the job
2. Managing Not letting your emotions get in the way of getting
emotions the job done
3. Motivating Being optimistic despite obstacles, setbacks, and
oneself failure
4. Empathy Putting yourself in someone else’s situation and
understanding that person’s emotions
5. Social skills To build relationships, respond to emotions, and
influence others
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The Four Learning Styles (2 of 2)

1. Accommodator Prefers learning by doing and feeling

2. Diverger Prefers learning by observing and feeling

3. Converger Prefers learning by doing and thinking

4. Assimilator Prefers learning by observing and thinking

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The Learning Organization (1 of 2)

⚫ Learning organizations:
⚫ cultivate the capacity to learn, adapt, and change with the
environment to be innovative with speed
⚫ focus on improving learning and on determining how
knowledge is circulated throughout the organization
⚫ question old beliefs and ways of doing things, yet they
make the learning process as painless as possible

⚫ When employees work together, learning and

innovation are optimized
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The Learning Organization (2 of 2)

The learning organization learns to:
⚫ Operate using the systems effect

⚫ Avoid making the same mistakes

⚫ Make continuous performance improvements

⚫ Share information
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Perception
⚫ Perception – refers to a person’s
interpretation of reality
⚫ People with different personalities perceive things
differently
⚫ Perception is influenced by:
⚫ Heredity
⚫ Environment

⚫ Personality

⚫ Intelligence

⚫ Needs

⚫ Self concept, attitudes, and values

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Biases in Perception

Stereotypes

Frame of
Expectations
Reference

Selective Projection
Interest
Exposure
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Perceptual Congruence
⚫ The degree to which people see things the
same way
⚫ When people perceive things the same way,
there are positive consequences in the
organization
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Developing Positive First

Impressions
• Four-minute Barrier -
⚫ Primacy Effect - The The time we have to
way people perceive make a good
one another during impression
their first impressions
⚫ These first impressions:
⚫ Establish the mental
framework within which
people view one another
⚫ Are based on personality
and appearance
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Image Projection
⚫ Image – other people’s attitudes toward us
⚫ Impression management – image from your
perspective
⚫ We can control the image we project by our:
⚫ appearance

⚫ nonverbal communications
⚫ behavior